Modern Homo sapiens stagnate too much. That much we know. What we’re less sure about is how to get ourselves to move more, consistently. Where do we find time for regular exercise in our hectic lives?

The answer to that question is simple: the morning. After all,

1. The early morning is the time of day when we have the most freedom to take care of ourselves.
2. Morning movement has the benefit of waking us up faster and boosting energy, so it can help us get more out of each day.

That’s nice and all, but this logic is not going to get us moving all by itself. To guarantee daily bodily motion, we must make it fun and fully automatic.

Which brings us to today’s article. Here are the five types of movement that are now so deeply ingrained in my morning routine that I have little doubt they will last a (substantially longer) lifetime.

Movement 1: Dancing (Badly)

I bet you don’t exactly feel like tearing up the dancefloor (or living room floor) shortly after waking up. Neither do I. But it takes only a few bars of my morning dance song (below) to switch me on.

The key is to remove the choice of whether to dance or not to dance. Your morning dance song must start playing automatically at just the right moment to push you over that threshold. After that, you never look back!

That’s why a choreographed morning routine is so vital. Such a handcrafted routine takes time to set up, but it will boost your health, productivity, energy, relationships, and inspiration for the rest of your life. You’ll struggle to find an investment with a better rate of return.

My morning dance song is third on my playlist and ensures I’m up and running (and in a great mood) 10 minutes after opening my eyes. It’s also ideally structured so that I can do typical morning stuff like washing my face, swirling some mouthwash, and weighing myself in the verse, and be back on the dancefloor just in time for each of the three funky choruses.

Go on, dance like nobody’s watching! And if you live with family, try to get them to participate. You’ll all benefit from such a natural boost in morning mood and energy 🙂

Movement 2: Double-Time Yoga

Yoga is a great way to loosen up in the morning. The only problem is that most routines are so slow that they either put you back to sleep or bore you to the point where you drop this great habit. That was a genuine problem for me until I made a miraculous discovery: the 2x speedup button.

For example, I have seven different morning yoga routines (one for each day of the week), most of which come from Rodney Yee’s AM Yoga DVD. At normal speed, these routines take a little over 20 minutes and move way too slowly for my liking. But if I double the playback speed, I need only 10 minutes and really enjoy the pace of the routine.

Try it on the example given below! You’ll find the playback speed under the little gear icon on the bottom right.

It took a day or two to get used to rapidly-speaking-Rodney, but today, more than two years of daily yoga later, that’s just the way he talks.

Like dancing, the key to consistency is to remove the element of choice. Your yoga instructions should automatically start playing at precisely the right time, triggering you to start without a second thought.

Movement 3: Free Weights

Resistance training is great for health and equally great for self-image. Unfortunately, going to the gym is just so tedious, time-consuming, and expensive (and impossible with social distancing). But what else can we do?

That’s an easy one: We can buy a gym chair and a pair of compact weights and put them where we’ll see them every day. Below is a picture of the little home gym that has kept my upper body in a decent “Dorito” shape for the past eight years.

I do a combined two minutes of bicep curls, shoulder presses, and chest presses every morning. It’s not exactly fun, but it’s so short that it doesn’t matter. Besides, I do these exercises while chewing on a big mouthful of my delicious breakfast, which is a whole lot of fun!

After many years of this practice, I’m confident that two minutes of vigorous lifting daily is all that’s needed to keep me at the ideal muscle tone — not too little, not too much, but just right. No gym payment, no sweat, virtually no time investment. Heck, it almost feels like cheating 🙂

Movement 4: Constitution

My constitution is a brief description of how the ideal version of me would act, which I recite to the beat of some inspirational music each morning. It’s quite an active process, involving plenty of pacing around the living room, power poses, and sweeping gestures.

It may look downright ridiculous from the outside, but any ego-related concerns quickly fade next to the tremendous value of conditioning my mind toward its ideal state. The movement aspect is just a nice bonus.

Movement 5: Accountability Buddy

About 30 minutes of my typical morning is spent in standing Skype conversation with family, courtesy of my raise-and-lower desk. This habit played a significant role in transforming me into a consistently early riser.

Standing for these morning chats is just a bonus, given that any mechanism to cut sitting time on a daily basis adds great long-term value.

Time to get moving!

You might be surprised at how little movement we need to stay healthy. If you’re smart about it, you can incorporate the majority of that movement into your morning routine at virtually no cost while reaping tremendous benefits in terms of wakefulness, energy, and mood.

Again, I must stress the importance of choreographing this movement into your morning playlist so that you make it the default choice. Humans are lazy apes (especially just after waking up), and expecting ourselves to make the conscious choice to exercise every morning is bordering on self-delusion. Instead, we should place ourselves in a position where we must invest mental effort not to exercise. Then, good things happen 🙂

The images in this article were custom-made by Janet Cloete.